Traffic will be restricted on a key bridge into downtown St. Paul after inspectors raised questions about its safety.

The Kellogg Boulevard-Third Street Bridge will be reduced to three center lanes starting next Monday as the city determines how best to address structural problems identified in the bridge’s cantilevers, the city said Tuesday.

Cracks found along the bridge’s cantilevers — the support arms extending from the structure’s piers — along with changes to federal bridge codes are prompting the shift, City Engineer John Maczko said.

“The cracking is something we have been monitoring for awhile but we weren’t too concerned about,” Maczko said.

But when the city found money in its budget to initiate pre-design work to repair the bridge, staff came across the new federal specifications, Maczko added.

“It’s one of those rare cases when the federal change was to address loading on the cantilevers. … Basically, the bridge as it is designed today would not be allowed to be built,” Mazcko said. “Some assumptions have changed, and we’re accommodating for that.”

Closing the lanes that run across the cantilevers will ensure the bridge’s continued safety and stability until a longer-term solution is in place, he added.

Two lanes will run westbound; one will run eastbound. An additional lane will accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. Currently, two lanes run in either direction.

The half-mile-long bridge was built in 1982 by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and carries about 10,000 cars daily. It was inspected annually until city engineers became aware of the cracking in recent years and increased monitoring to about every four months, Mazcko said.

A 2014 inspection report by the city noted “extensive cracking at cantilevers” and “longitudinal cracks” at the top of six piers near where the columns meet the cantilever.

The structure also was included on a 2010 MnDOT list of bridges deemed “structurally deficient and functionally obsolete.”

For now, the city wants to rebuild the 32-year-old bridge, an undertaking roughly estimated to cost from $30 million to $40 million, Mazcko said.

By comparison, repairing and strengthening the cantilevers would cost about $8 million.

Replacement would allow the city to build a bridge to better handle future needs, Mazcko said.

“Right now, the bridge carries cars. It doesn’t do a good job of carrying pedestrians or bicyclists … and it doesn’t have anything for bus rapid transit,” Mazcko said. “So it would really be remiss to, in my opinion, just spend $8 million to address part of the problem when you could … address all of them for today and in to the future.”

City council President Kathy Lantry acknowledged the magnitude of the undertaking and said it was too early to say how long the project might take.

“We are talking about a bridge that is a half a mile long. … I am guessing the engineering alone takes quite a bit of time,” Lantry said. “There are still a lot of pieces that need to come together.”

Among them is funding, Lantry said. She said the city already has begun talks with the state and federal government about financing the project.

She said the interruption to traffic in the interim would not be minimal.

“I don’t want to underplay that it is going to change how people enter downtown,” Lantry said. “It’s how I come in. … I am on that bridge a thousand times a day. … When you put a lot of traffic into a narrower opening, you’re going to have some congestion.”

The bridge’s design — known as a T-pier — is not uncommon among the state’s 20,000 bridges, said Nancy Daubenberger, state bridge engineer for MnDOT.

What is unusual is the length of its cantilevers, which Daubenberger described as “somewhat” longer than average.

“So that makes it a little bit more susceptible to different load concerns,” she said.

Though MnDOT does not typically inspect the city-owned bridge, it was involved in a recent inspection with a consultant.

“Basically, the amount of distress in the pier cap and the analysis that followed (found) it shouldn’t be carrying traffic on those outside lanes until they can be strengthened,” Daubenberger said.

There are several ways the city could address the issue, Daubenberger said, including replacing the bridge.

“That is really up to the city,” she said.

Most bridges built in the 1980s have a life expectancy of 50 years or more, Daubenberger said.

She added that the city has been responsible in its oversight of the bridge.

“They have followed the typical approach to these sorts of things. … I think they followed the right processes in decision-making,” she said.

The bridge will be temporarily closed at 9 a.m. Friday to allow for previously planned construction on Prince Street.

The closure also will allow staff to prepare the bridge with new striping and signs to ready it for the upcoming lane closures, which will take effect at 6 a.m. Monday.

Those closures will continue indefinitely until a new plan is in place.

“Congestion levels might get a little longer, especially in the mornings and evenings,” Maczko said. “But we’ve had floods before along (Kellogg) and people have made it in to downtown. … It will be an inconvenience but we really don’t have any other choice.”

With the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which killed 13 people in 2007, still fresh in many residents’ minds, officials insisted the Kellogg Boulevard bridge is safe.

“It’s important for residents to understand that using the bridge remains safe and that the lane restrictions are the only immediately required response to the findings,” Maczko said.

Lantry said she has no fears about continuing to commute across the bridge everyday.

“There are people who know this and this is the plan they’ve suggested. I have to rely on their expertise,” she said.

Find more information about the bridge online at stpaul.gov/ Kellogg-ThirdStreetBridge. Sarah Horner can be reached at 651-228-5539. Follow her at twitter.com/hornsarah.

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